Born 1951, Luis Macas Ambuludí is a Kichwa politician and intellectual from Saraguro, Ecuador. Macas has university degrees in anthropology, linguistics and urisprudence. (full text).

In Ecuador, where indigenous people represent 45 percent of the population, Luis Macas, a Quichua Indian from the Andean highlands, has emerged as the leading champion of indigenous rights. (full text).

He says: “Respect for diversity is the foundation for all social construction. If an individual, nationality or people impose their will on the rest, things will not work. We need to find links that bring us together in a space that fosters respect”. (full long interview text, July 25, 2005).

The powerful Ecuadorian indigenous movement faces one of its biggest challenges yet in the October 15th presidential elections – for the first time they are presenting their own candidate. For them it is not about winning, it is about continuing the indigenous struggle after a great crisis. When the Ecuadorian indigenous movement backed a candidate in the last presidential elections, it was a huge victory that quickly turned into a disaster … (full text, Sept. 20, 2006).

In 2003 he joined Lucio Gutiérrez’s government as Minister of Agriculture, quit because of disagreements with his neoliberal policies. (full text).

He says also: “I definitely believe that if we don’t begin to understand ourselves, in the framework of mutual respect, if we don’t begin to be conscious of each sector and it’s particularities, our country is finished. We believe it is necessary and important that everyone have the opportunity to participate in the benefits the state can give them. Here, we are obviously speaking not only of bettering the lives in the Indios and the campesinos, but also of all Ecuador’s citizens. On the other hand, we are called to a great chore. We have to search for an ideological focus point. I believe the fundamental issue all Ecuadorians have spoken to us about is identity. This is another of the crises we live with. Although in recent years we have seen an appropriate response to this problem, there still isn’t the recognition of human values in ourselves. We are not going to be able to change politically and economically because we are living in a global crisis. This crisis is the absence of self-recognition, the absence of the recognition of the human values in one’s self, as well as the values of the collective group. Therefore, we are also moving towards this idea. What the Indigenous movement proposed years ago isn’t an empty discourse. We believe the resources for the development of our people are in ourselves. (Full interview text, not dated).

In 2002 Pachakutik, the political arm of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), formed an alliance with Lucio Gutierrez, former coup leader, military man, and a fierce anti-neoliberal. Gutierrez won. Four Pachakutik members were appointed ministers, most notably the indigenous foreign minister, Nina Pacari. Yet only a few months after taking office, Gutierrez shifted to the political right and signed deals with the IMF, thus continuing the country’s neoliberal track. At the same time, he began to subvert the indigenous movement from within. Pachakutik left the Gutierrez government after only three months in 2003 but the political credibility and the strong organization that the indigenous movement had built up through 20 years of scrupulous work and uprisings was left shattered. Commentators who had once called CONAIE one of the strongest social movements in Latin America started writing obituaries on the movement. Yet after licking its wounds, CONAIE reorganized and elected their historic leader Luis Macas president … (full text, Sept. 23, 2006).

Macas has been president of the CONAIE (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador) from 1990 to 1996 and since 2004. On May 24, 2006 Macas was proclaimed by the Pachakutik Movement as presidential candidate for the October 15, 2006 election. He came in seventh (out of 13 candidates), with just over 2 percent of the vote. (full text).

We are honored to welcome Dr. Luis Macas as the newest boardmember to Seventh Generation Fund – he has been a friend and ally of our organization for over a decade. Dr. Macas (Saraguro) is from Quito, Ecuador and … (full text).